About the job
About Us:
At Challenge Manufacturing, our mission is to achieve operational excellence through the empowerment of our employee-owners. As a premier Tier 1 supplier of intricate metal assemblies for the global automotive sector, we are at the forefront of driving innovative solutions for the future of mobility. We believe that the most impactful ideas stem from diverse perspectives. By merging these insights with the collaborative efforts of industry pioneers, we tackle any challenge with confidence. Our team members take immense pride in their work, embodying our core values of safety, ownership, and teamwork each day; they are the true driving force behind our success.
We are proud to be one of North America's largest employee-owned automotive companies. A significant advantage of joining the Challenge team is our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), which annually awards shares of the company to all employee-owners. These shares serve as an additional retirement benefit that grows throughout your tenure with us, allowing our employee-owners to share in Challenge's success!
Challenge is #QualityDriven and #PeoplePowered!
Who We Are Looking For:
Challenge Manufacturing Company’s Internship Program offers students the opportunity to gain real-world experience through technical and software exposure. This is achieved via individual projects, hands-on tasks on the plant floor, and much more. We take pride in providing our interns with a head start in the automotive industry, enhancing their future career prospects.
We are currently seeking an Operational Technology Automation Engineering Intern to join our dynamic team!
Your Responsibilities:
The intern will collaborate closely with controls, manufacturing, and maintenance engineers to model press behavior, gather and visualize real-time machine data, and develop a scalable digital twin architecture that supports future predictive maintenance and performance optimization initiatives.
- Assist in the creation of a digital twin for 800+ ton mechanical stamping presses
- Gain experience with Rockwell Automation PLCs (Allen-Bradley ControlLogix / CompactLogix)
- Identify, map, and validate PLC I/O and data tags related to press operations
- Configure and implement OPC UA for secure, structured data communication between PLCs and higher-level systems
- Support data integration into Ignition SCADA for visualization, trending, and analysis
- Develop logic-based and data-driven models of press motion, tonnage, cycle timing, and operational states
- Create dashboards or visual tools to represent real-time and historical press performance metrics

